Live And Learn ~ Cake Flour And Cookies...

Well, I just learned the hard way that cake flour isn't the best choice for making chocolate chip cookies... I was rushing to finish family cookie baskets and grabbed my cake flour. BIG mistake. They taste good, but they spread way out and flattened.

(I've used cake flour for my "sugar cookies" with GREAT success....infact, I get the best results that way. ~but NOT chocolate chip. Weird... )

Oh no, cake flour is the only thing I make my chocolate chip cookies with. I do bake them in a jelly roll pan because with all butter they do turn into a pancake, but I don't like my cookies chewy. They are soft and moist with cake flour (I made some Tuesday night on the fly and only had a little cake flour, so they were made moistly with AP and they were chewy and yucky, but they were going into a trifle so I didn't care). I love the texture of cake flour in my chocolate chip, learned that from Alton. I use his puffy recipe except I use all butter. I use less chocolate chips too. I like to have a little cookie with my chocolate chips. So try them in a jelly roll pan (I line a 15x10 cookie pan that has sides with parchment and then spread it out; one batch of cookie dough) and cut them with a round cookie cutter when they are still warm. That way you get lots of scraps to put on your ice cream!

Thanks Michelle ~ maybe it was the butter because this recipe called for LOTS. I'll try cutting back on the chocolate chips too. I was hoping for a thicker cookie to support the weight of the chips. I don't own a jelly roll pan, but I may try that. They were a HUGE hit, so atleast they tasted great.

I think my recipe uses 2 sticks of butter (1 cup I think?). I also used 1-1/2 cups of chips and the recipe called for 2. Not a huge difference really, but they were still packed with chips!

I don't technically have a jelly roll pan either, I just use a cookie sheet that is 15x10 and has sides/walls. I cannot make a regular chocolate chip cookie to save my life! I like using all butter and no matter how much I chill the dough, they spread like pancakes. I'm glad I finally found a way to make chocolate chip cookies that look as good as they taste!